The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll (4 page)

As Alice instinctively moved away from the demands of her husband and child, she began spending a great deal of time with her new friend Paula Gellibrand. Born in London in 1898, Paula was a famous society model, described by many of her contemporaries as the most beautiful woman in Europe. Later, Paula became a favorite model of Cecil Beaton, who photographed her many times, emphasizing her Modigliani features and exquisitely slender hands. She was also a muse to the novelist Enid Bagnold, who used her as an inspiration for the eponymous heroine of her novel
Serena Blandish
(1924). Alice first met Paula in Paris in 1921, when Paula had recently become engaged to a Cuban-Castilian count, Pedro José Isidiro Manuel Ricardo Mones Maury, the marquis de Casa Maury, otherwise known as “Bobby,” or, less flatteringly, “the Cuban Heel.” This Bugatti-driving Grand Prix winner lost his fortune during the Wall Street crash, and then later remade it running the Curzon cinema in London. Although no one could quite understand why Paula was marrying the marquis—it seems he had few redeeming qualities—the newly engaged Paula was in Paris to visit friends and to organize her wedding, which ultimately took place in 1923 at St. James’s Church, Spanish Place, in London.

Paula and Alice quickly became close friends and allies, attending soirees, going to the opera and ballet together, and frequenting the best art exhibitions and fashion shows. They were both fun-seekers, naturally adventurous, with a shared tendency for daring and a love of haute couture (Paula went on to become a fashion designer). Both were brunettes, extremely beautiful in the bargain, and their attraction to each other may also have had something to do with the fact that they sensed neither one would ever become jealous of the other. Of all the women in Alice’s life, it was Paula who came closest to providing her with a soul mate. Alice attributed much of her recovery after the birth of her daughter to the fact that she could spend so much time with Paula, and so when Paula left Paris for London in January 1923, Alice was bereft. There was nobody in her immediate group of friends who could replace Paula. For Alice, already ill at ease with the roles of countess and mother, Paula’s departure triggered another bout of depression. Although the upper echelons of aristocratic Paris might have seemed glamorous at first, such society soon revealed itself to be rather stultifying in its elitism and formalities. Alice remained close to Frédéric’s mother, Moya, but found the rest of her husband’s extended family and friends to be cold, forbidding, and snobbish. There were rules that had to be followed for the simplest of actions, and every social interaction was a complex affair. Alice’s French was good, but even so, she spoke with an American accent and was intelligent enough to know when she was being looked down upon. As she struggled to improve her language skills and her knowledge of
comme il faut,
she would have found it exhausting and tedious work.

It was under these circumstances that Frédéric was able to persuade Alice that a spell in the countryside at Parfondeval with her daughter might do her some good. Situated in the heart of Normandy, near the small town of Londinières, the Château de Parfondeval had been in the de Janzé family since the mid-1600s (in fact, the house is still in the possession of the de Janzé family). It is spacious and sprawling, with three separate living quarters. The central apartment, where Moya lived, consisted of a series of wide floors connected by a steep staircase. The right pavilion, or east wing, belonged to Frédéric’s brother, and the left pavilion, or west wing, was Frédéric’s birthright and where he kept a small library. In Normandy, Alice found herself at a healthy distance from her social life in Paris and in sympathetic company, at least for the most part. Aunt Tattie had arranged for Edward, her faithful African-American butler from Chicago, to go to France and join the staff at Parfondeval. Alice had grown very fond of Edward when she lived with Aunt Tattie as a teenager. He had a quick sense of humor and was a talented magician, and he frequently performed little conjuring tricks to entertain her. He was also an accomplished photographer and was given his own darkroom at Parfondeval. In later years, Edward proved to be a close friend to Alice’s two children, both of whom gravitated to him.

Moya de Janzé, the mistress of the house, was a kindly woman and was proving to be an adoring grandmother to Nolwen. Alice had always felt comfortable in the company of her mother-in-law, who understood Alice’s struggles to adjust to France and the French way of life. As a fellow American who had become a French countess, Moya could help explain exactly what was expected of Alice when it came to etiquette and protocol. Even in this isolated corner of Normandy, manners and traditions were an integral part of daily life, and to ignore them would only have caused consternation among the staff and neighbors. At Moya’s urging, Alice agreed to stop riding her horse astride, as she had done in America, and to ride sidesaddle, on the left side, as was the local custom. Any other method was considered inelegant and unbecoming for a French woman of Alice’s status. Alice had been trained from early girlhood to ride sidesaddle and had left and right sidesaddles in her trousseau. She was an able horsewoman and quickly accommodated to European tackle, bridles, and riding style.

Riding and hunting were among Alice’s greatest pleasures during her stay at Parfondeval. At her husband’s estate, she was surrounded by miles and miles of open countryside and forests, mostly full of deer and wild boar. When riding, Alice experienced the kind of freedom from her responsibilities that she craved. As a woman with a strong visual sense, she also appreciated the spectacle of Parfondeval’s hunts: As many as six elegantly attired huntsmen would ride out, equipped with large curling hunting horns and high-domed hunting hats. Isolated for the most part from those around her, Alice often found a more natural and satisfying interaction with animals and nature. Throughout her life, she loved to ride and always kept pets. At Parfondeval, she surrounded herself with her four beloved Alsatian dogs. In a photo of the young countess taken in Normandy, she is gazing lovingly and intently at these large and wolflike creatures. Even with her animals for solace, however, Alice soon grew restless in the countryside. After three years in France, Alice still spoke with a heavy accent and often complained to Moya and Frédéric that the servants at Parfondeval were laughing at her behind her back.

What’s more, Alice had a new sister-in-law with whom to contend. Shortly after Nolwen’s birth in June 1922, Frédéric’s younger brother, Henri de Janzé, had married an English beauty named Phyllis Boyd. Unable to afford a place of their own in Paris or London, the newlyweds had taken up residence at Parfondeval, occupying the east wing of the château and sharing the grounds with the other members of the household. Henri was twenty at the time of the wedding and Phyllis was twenty-eight. Born in London in 1894, Phyllis was the daughter of Lady Lilian Boyd and the granddaughter of the second earl of Munster on her mother’s side. Her father, W. A. E. Boyd, had been a captain in the Life Guards. Phyllis could also boast that she was the great-great-granddaughter of the beautiful Dorothea Bland (better known by her stage name, Mrs. Jordan), the longtime mistress of King William IV. In other words, Phyllis possessed the exact kind of aristocratic pedigree that Alice, as an American, lacked. There is no doubt that Alice perceived Phyllis’s appearance at Parfondeval as a threat. Phyllis was five years older than Alice. She was intellectual and cultivated, having studied art at the Slade School in London, where she had shown impressive talent. The writer Osbert Sitwell later commented on Phyllis’s “artistic ability” and “unusual personal charm and distinction.” The novelist Barbara Cartland, who witnessed her dancing at London’s Embassy Club in the early 1920s, noted her “mysterious, haunting beauty,” her “high cheekbones and pale aquamarine eyes,” as well as her “violent temper.” The artist Dora Carrington, who fell in love with Phyllis during her time at the Slade—and who visited her at Parfondeval toward the end of 1922—found her “dazzling,” “like a grand Persian whore with a scarlet mouth.”

In other words, Alice’s place in the de Janzé family had been somewhat usurped by this impressive new arrival from England, and inevitably there was some competition and tension between the sisters-in-law. Alice was ahead of the game slightly because she had produced a child by the middle of 1922, and this placed her in good stead with the family-conscious de Janzés. But in the background, there was a rumble of sniping from Phyllis’s side. It seems that Phyllis found Alice to be intellectually bereft and childishly moody. It is true that Alice would rather be outdoors than in a library, but it is still worth noting that throughout her life she managed to hold her own with a string of intellectual men and women. As for her moods, these were by no means predictable, and so it is no surprise that Phyllis, who was from a more reserved English background, would have found them unseemly. Above all, Phyllis was bold, confident, and upper-class, therefore much more at home in the gentrified world of the de Janzés. Phyllis regularly sneered at Alice’s “gauche” and “American” behavior and frequently joined in mocking her French and her refusal to learn the codes of conduct befitting a countess. It was at this time that Phyllis and Henri began referring to Alice as “la Négresse.” This strange tease may have had something to do with Alice’s hair, which was naturally very curly. Or it may have originated in the haughty European assumption that all old white American families had once employed slaves and therefore were likely to have African ancestors somewhere along the line. The rumor that Alice had black blood—as propagated by Henri and Phyllis—was one that stuck. Years later, Alice’s grandson, Guillaume de Rougemont, remembers that Henri de Janzé’s daughter Solange believed that Alice was a “
négresse,
” and that consequently her cousin Guillaume de Rougemont must have “a touch of the tar brush.”

For some months during Alice’s stay at Parfondeval, there was much backstabbing between the two women. Finally, a truce was reached after it became apparent that they shared a passion for haute couture. Alice and Phyllis even put aside their animosity long enough to talk about the idea of going into business together. They spoke of starting a little boutique in Paris, recognizing in each other the qualities that would be needed for a successful business venture—Phyllis had the flair, while Alice had the contacts and money to make it work. The boutique never materialized, and so we can only imagine what owning a business might have done for Alice’s sense of worth and independence during this period of her life. She had loved working for Arnot as a young woman in Paris and had benefited greatly from the feelings of usefulness and satisfaction an occupation can bring. Now, Alice found herself in Parfondeval, far from Paris, without direction, bored, and unfulfilled. It was in this frame of mind that she allowed Frédéric to persuade her that a second child might be the answer to her problems.

Alice named the new baby Paola, after her friend Paula, whom she still missed terribly. Paola Marie Jeanne was born on June 1, 1924. Once again, Alice fell into a prolonged depression soon after the birth. This was not an easy time for Alice, and there was little anybody could do to help. For his part, Frédéric had learned to forgive his wife’s bouts of sadness and inertia, especially as these were followed by bursts of marked vivacity, giving him the impression that she had completely recovered. But then the dark moods would return. It is likely that members of Frédéric’s family regularly wished that Alice would simply snap out of her introspection, assuming she was simply lazy, selfish, or even heartless, particularly when she failed to bond with her daughters. Certainly her relationship with Frédéric suffered as a result of her shifting moods. While he pursued his intellectual life, confining himself to his books, his library, and his literary friends, Alice was lonely. Motherhood simply held no real interest for her. Instead of bringing her a degree of fulfillment, her duties to her two daughters only made her feel trapped in a role for which she felt unsuited.

Cyclothymia, from which Alice almost certainly suffered, is a strain of bipolar syndrome that can often develop into full-blown manic depression later in life. Her moods and frequently erratic behavior reflected the classic symptoms of the disease: Sufferers undergo periods of mild but often debilitating depression alternating with periods of high spirits and irritability. It is estimated that a quarter of those afflicted attempt suicide at some point in their lives, as Alice had done as a teenager. The term
cyclothymia
was coined as early as 1877, but it was only much later, in the latter part of the twentieth century, that effective medications for stabilizing its symptoms were developed. It is highly likely that if Alice had lived in the present day, she would have been given the drugs she needed to alleviate her moods, thereby drastically altering the shape of her life. However, in 1925, no such treatments existed. To make matters worse, in the course of her time at Parfondeval, Alice had begun having frequent bronchial attacks brought on by lingering consumption, a condition with which her mother had also struggled.

Ever dutiful, Frédéric remained hopeful that another change of scene would help. He began to make plans to take Alice, to Africa, a place that he hoped would lift her spirits completely.

B
Y THE AUTUMN OF
1925, A
LICE WAS SUFFERING
from both physical and emotional problems: She was plagued by her bronchitis and what can best be described as an ingrained depression. In an effort to cure his wife of her difficulties, Frédéric decided to take Alice to Kenya, in what was then British colonial East Africa, where he hoped the balmy climate and high altitudes would help alleviate Alice’s troubles. The African trip was to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Frédéric was an avid traveler and hunter. In Kenya, he would have ample opportunity to satisfy his interest in exotic locations and his passion for shooting. Alice, meanwhile, could look forward to discovering another corner of the fascinating continent she had first encountered during her honeymoon in Morocco. In Kenya, Frédéric reminded her, she would be able to ride for miles under wide-open skies, surrounded by herds of wild and exotic animals.

What’s more, the de Janzés would be staying with friends who would provide the perfect antidote to the stuffy confines of French society. Frédéric and Alice had an invitation to visit Josslyn Hay, the future Lord Erroll, and his new wife, Lady Idina, at their home in Kenya’s Wanjohi Valley. Joss and Idina had first met the de Janzés in Paris in 1923, at which time both couples were only recently married. The Hays were a striking pair, a couple whose reputations preceded them. Joss was an Etonian who had been expelled from the school, and whose diplomat father had taken him away to Berlin as an honorary attaché, in the hope that his son might still enter the Foreign Office. Although stationed in Berlin, Joss found London and Paris far more amusing and often neglected his duties in a continuing quest for fun and women. It was in Paris that he met Frédéric and Alice. Joss was tall and attractive, with pale blond hair and an air of swagger about him, which came, in part, from an innate belief in his own superiority: His ancestors could be traced to the fourteenth century, and as the heir to the earldom of Erroll, he would also inherit the hereditary title of Lord High Constable of Scotland. Despite his illustrious heritage, however, there was a wildness to Joss: He was a natural womanizer, without respect for rules, regulations, and husbands in particular.

When Joss first met Lady Idina (née Sackville) in London in 1922, she was still married to her second husband, Charles Gordon. The daughter of the eighth earl de la Warr, she was something of a femme fatale, even by present-day standards. She had married her first husband, David Euan Wallace, in 1913, an arrangement that didn’t prevent her from carrying on numerous affairs. Attractive, witty, and liberated—with the kind of slender frame that suited 1920s fashions for loose, sheathlike silk dresses—Idina was renowned for her skills at seducing (and then often abandoning) men. When Nancy Mitford came to write her satire of the British upper classes,
The Pursuit of Love
(1945), it was Lady Idina who served as the model for the heroine’s mother, a woman who “ran away so often, and with so many different people, that she became known to her family and friends as the Bolter.” Joss and Idina’s union sparked a cause célèbre in London—the already-disreputable lady marrying a much younger soon-to-be lord. In a photograph published on the cover of
The Tatler,
they are the picture of louche happiness, Idina in a flowing Grecian shift and barefoot, and Joss in snazzily patterned pajamas.

Although there was doubtless a frisson of attraction between Alice and Joss upon first meeting, for the time being, it went no further. Alice was newly married and either pregnant or recovering from her pregnancies during the period of their first meetings. By early 1924, Joss and Idina recognized that they were on the verge of becoming society outcasts because of their scandalous union, so they decided to leave for Kenya, where Idina had lived for a time with her second husband. In the spring of 1924, they took up residence in the Wanjohi Valley, in the Kenyan highlands. Such a highly sociable couple might have felt isolated in the wilds of East Africa, but, in fact, the opposite was true. As soon as they arrived, they began sending out invitations to friends from Europe to come and visit. The de Janzés were high on the list of invitees.

In the early part of 1925, Frédéric started to make plans for the trip. He made inquiries as to how best to travel—on which boat line and by which route; he bought clothes, licenses, and weapons for shooting expeditions; and he arranged for the necessary typhoid injections. The de Janzés decided to leave their daughters, Nolwen and Paola, in the safe hands of Frédéric’s mother, Moya, ably assisted by Alice’s aunt Tattie. Paola was just fifteen months old; Nolwen was three years old. At such tender ages, they could not have understood that their mother was being taken away for the sake of her health or that both parents would be gone for such a long period of time. Alice and Frédéric planned to stay in Kenya for two months, with another two months factored in for travel there and back. If Alice was sad to bid farewell to her daughters, she also knew she had been given a reprieve. Here was her chance to escape from her responsibilities as a mother and as a countess. Together with Frédéric, she was eager to begin this new adventure.

In 1925, the journey from Paris to Mombasa took a little over a month. The de Janzés flew from Le Bourget airport in Paris to Marseilles in September 1925, having sent their cabin trunks ahead by rail. On September 17, they set sail from Marseilles on the SS
Gascon,
a twenty-eight-ear-old single-funneled vessel of the French Messageries Maritimes line. The ship housed seventy-eight first-class cabins, two of which were of a superior variety. The de Janzés had one of these and it was located on the preferred port (left) side, where passengers could gaze out on the coast of France. In her teenage years, before the Great War, Alice had crossed the Atlantic from New York to Cherbourg on the
Aquitania,
the magnificent Cunard luxury liner popular with wealthy Americans making their way to France. By contrast, a working vessel like the SS
Gascon
must have come as something of a shock. Although the de Janzés dined at the captain’s table, they would have felt they had little in common with their fellow passengers.

The ship passed Monaco, then San Remo at breakfast time. At Genoa, there was time to go ashore for a drive before returning to dine on board. By the evening of the fifth day, the captain steered to the port side so that the more privileged passengers could see from their cabins the island of Stromboli, with its active volcano sending luminous red sparks of lava into the night skies. The
Gascon
navigated the Straits of Messina, where temperatures began to rise. In the evenings, a small band played on board and Alice danced. Three days after leaving the Straits of Messina, they arrived at Port Said, where Egyptian “Gully Gully” men, or conjurers, came on board to entertain the passengers. After the ship docked at Port Said, Alice and Frédéric went ashore to shop at Simon Artz, the famous department store, and to take tea at the Casino Hotel, reembarking in time to leave at midnight en route for the Suez Canal. At Suez, the
Gascon
stopped for half a day in order to off-load cargo. Alice and Frédéric would have looked down at the docks to see legions of completely naked ebony-skinned Sudanese laborers with massive halos of curly black hair (“Fuzzy Wuzzies” in the colonial lingo of the time). The passage through the canal took eight hours and was eerily calm after so many days at sea. The passengers aboard the
Gascon
would have appreciated the respite from the rolling of the ship as they contemplated Ferdinand de Lesseps and his miracle of engineering. By now, it was hot, with temperatures reaching ninety degrees Fahrenheit. In a time before air conditioning, everyone cooled themselves with cabin fans. Games were organized on deck. Four days after Suez, the
Gascon
arrived at Aden. Most people preferred to stay on board, since the only place to visit was the neighboring port of Crater, a prospect that seemed daunting due to the heat. One more dress dinner and dance and five more days later, they were through to the Indian Ocean.

The
Gascon
was bound for Mombasa. This lush island, connected to the mainland of Africa by a precarious-looking causeway, has its main port at Kilindini. As the ship approached its final destination, the view of Kilindini harbor would have been stunning: an ancient Portuguese fort, clusters of palm trees, hundreds of black porters, some in red fez hats, and Thomas Cook agents in sharp-peaked caps thronging the harbor. After disembarking, Alice and Frédéric were reunited with their luggage and taken by rickshaw to the main railway station, which was only half a mile away. The Mombasa railway station of 1925 was of basic construction. A simple facade bore the station sign; then another notice indicated “upper class passengers and luggage.” Just inside the station gates, there were lists posted with each carriage number and the names of the occupants. The de Janzés’ train left Mombasa station at four thirty in the afternoon to the sounds of applause and cheers from the platform and carriages. The engine pulled out across the causeway, heading toward the mainland, then moved uphill through coconut plantations and mango trees, the elevation increasing incrementally with each mile.

This was the famous “Lunatic Line”—the legendary railway built between 1895 (the first year of British rule in the Kenyan Protectorate) and 1901. Stretching from Mombasa on the east coast across nearly six hundred miles to the shores of Lake Victoria in the west, the railway had first been proposed by the Imperial British East Africa Company but had been bedeviled by political controversy from the start. Back in London, there were questions about its cost (5 million pounds, about 450 million pounds in today’s money) and if there was actually any real need for it. Those in favor argued that the line would be a strategic move for the new British colony, a counterbalance to the imperial expansion being undertaken by the Germans in East Africa. Opponents argued that the line was a folly, built to prove the extent of British might and engineering ability rather than in response to a measurable need. The British radical politician Henry Labouchère dubbed the project the “Lunatic Line,” insisting that the railway was completely without purpose. The crux of his argument was that it crossed many hundreds of miles of completely empty and unoccupied lands en route to nowhere. His scathing poem about the project goes as follows:

What will it cost no words can express

What is its object no brain can suppose

Where it will start from no-one can guess

Where it is going to nobody knows.

What is the use of it none can conjecture

What it will carry there’s none can define

And in spite of George Curzon’s superior lecture

It is clearly nought but a lunatic line.

The majority disagreed with Labouchère and building went ahead, continuing apace over a period of five and a half years. In the words of Albert Thomas Matson, who went on to become the health inspector for the Colonial service in Kenya, this was “the most courageous railway in the world,” and along with the Orient Express and the Trans-Siberian Express, the Lunatic Line provided one of the world’s great train journeys. Never before had a railway crossed such varied and often perilous terrain, spanning jungle, desert, mountains, plains, forest, and swamplands, climbing from the coast to around eight thousand feet above sea level. Thirty-two thousand Indian workers were shipped in from the subcontinent to lay its tracks, many of whom died of heatstroke and tropical diseases or were devoured by man-eating lions during the construction. The track itself was only one meter wide and mostly single track to help facilitate the steepness of the climb. Thirty-five viaducts and 120 bridges and culverts had to be built before it reached its end.

Wood-burning steam engines were British-made UR 35s, the type also used in India. They belched black smoke, and frequent stops were required in order to refill the boilers with water. Despite this, well-to-do first-class passengers who boarded such trains in 1925 were treated with ample care. Alice and Frédéric dined in a grass-roofed hut after disembarking at Voi, some 150 miles uphill from Mombasa. Waiters were white-clad stewards from Goa, in India, who served up a menu of tinned salmon, meatballs, fruit and custard, and, for the first course, Brown Windsor soup. (This beef and vegetable broth was very popular in Victorian and Edwardian times, especially on the railways, and was often said to have built the British Empire.) During dinner, attendants would carry the bedding into the carriage’s berths in order to make up the beds. On reboarding the train, Alice and Frédéric would have gone to their berth, closed their mosquito nets, and opened their windows so as to enjoy the cool air coming in from the plains. First-class berths were comfortable, given the circumstances, and designed to accommodate two people, with private lavatories equipped with a small sink. Second-class berths were large, open affairs and could sleep four. Third-class carriages had simple slatted wooden benches and no beds at all. In 1925, the axles of the passenger carriages would have been badly sprung, causing an immense jolt each time the train’s wheels hit a gap in the rail. The joke went that couples honeymooning in Kenya would never forget their time in one of the berths of the Lunatic Line.

During such a bumpy ride, sleep would have come fitfully, if at all. Alice and Frédéric may have deliberately tried to stay awake, eager to see signs of wildlife from the window. Even so, the almost total blackness of the African night would have prevented any sightings. As the passengers dozed in their berths and seats, the train climbed through forest and red rock to the great plain that slopes from one thousand feet above sea level to six thousand feet at the foot of the Kenyan highlands. At Makindu, the de Janzés joined their fellow passengers in an outdoor refreshment room for breakfast. Porridge, eggs and bacon, and tea were the standard fare. By the time they returned to the train, dawn was breaking and the engine resumed its pace toward the Athi River. At six in the morning, when the sun rose, Alice and Frédéric would have shared the delight of witnessing herds of giraffe, antelope, zebra, and perhaps even elephants moving across the vast plains. At twelve thirty in the afternoon, the train arrived at Nairobi Station, some 329 miles from Mombasa. Looking down at their clothes, Alice and Frédéric saw they were covered in a thin layer of red dust blown from the burnished rocks en route. They would have felt immensely weary from the journey, and the thin air at such an altitude would have only added to their tiredness. By arrangement, no one was there to meet them. They knew that their friend Joss Hay would contact them later in the day at Nairobi’s Norfolk Hotel, a favorite meeting place for Kenya’s expatriate settlers and visitors. So they took two rickshaws and went to the Norfolk for hot baths. The Lunatic Line had delivered them to Nairobi twenty-four hours after their departure from Mombasa.